So, let’s make some things clear. We, the voters of New Zealand, are on a very real and not-so-metaphorical level Jacinda Ardern’s employers. That means we have all the responsibilities that entails as well as the rights.

If an employer in any way implied that your family status had a direct impact on your status in your job, you would absolutely have a discrimination case against them, even if you weren’t a woman. If they tried to imply your age was relevant to your qualification in an interview, that would also be a huge problem for them. While nobody can police you in the ballot box for voting that way, if you genuinely want MPs to act more like they’re employed by the public, (which they are) then we have to accept that there are certain debates the public doesn’t get to have about MPs, or even coalition leaders, and that we should do our best to ignore those factors in our votes. I know for a fact that some of the people expressing sexist opinions about how Ms Ardern’s age disqualifies her or how we supposedly have a right to know whether she plans to start a family while Labour Leader are equally as keen on being allowed to fire MPs like Todd Barclay or Metiria Turei. They certainly can’t have things both ways.

When do Jacinda Ardern’s family plans become our business? Like any employer, when she actually is pregnant and needs to plan how to reconcile that with her job. Until then, we don’t actually have a right to know- it’s up to her how much she chooses to share, and anyone who asks outside of a personal capacity is being incredibly rude. (And honestly, it’s a bit of a minefield to ask that sort of question even in a personal capacity when they haven’t already made their general opinions clear to you)

When does her age become relevant? It doesn’t, at least not until she’s literally old enough that we might legitimately worry about her health not being up to the challenge of being a leader, which frankly, is unlikely to happen before her political career ends, and New Zealand politics has largely avoided the issues that say, American politics has with people running at older and older ages, so as long as that trend continues, age itself should be an irrelevancy. We can discuss her temperament, and we can discuss her experience, but assuming those directly from her age is unfair.

I won’t ask people whether they’d ask these questions of a man, because honestly, we’ve had a man with a pretty large family as Prime Minister for a few months now (and yes, Bill English has from time to time taken time off from votes or responsibilities to see his family. And that’s actually okay, so long as he’s delegated responsibilities appropriately and is still actually keeping up with his job, which there’s no indication he isn’t) and it hasn’t come up, so anyone who says they would is lying, either to you or to themselves.

If we can simply assume that a man with a large family can do the job, then we should be willing to give the same trust and leeway to a woman that might potentially want to start a hypothetical family. If we can simply assume that some of the older MPs we’ve had in leadership positions are up to the job without having dumb discussions about non-existent health concerns, then we can simply evaluate a younger MP on her experience and leave her age out of it. It’s not too much to ask of us to be good employers.

And honestly, the more people use these things as criticism against Ms Ardern, the more strident support she’s going to get from liberal voters who are tired of this whole ridiculous song and dance, and there’s really no good evidence it’s going to be very convincing to swing voters.